


Look back and regret nothing

by j_gabrielle



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-12 23:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_gabrielle/pseuds/j_gabrielle
Summary: They were, it finally dawned on him, the two shyest persons in the world.





	Look back and regret nothing

**Author's Note:**

> [Based on a fanart on Tumblr done by liza801 for drunkardonjunkyard](https://randomingoftherandomness.tumblr.com/post/186854283162/valoris-call-me-by-your-name-au-for)
> 
> I wrote this while binge listening to Lana Del Rey. It's a mood.
> 
> Inspiration and passages were taken from pages 159 - 160, 162 - 163 of the Call Me By Your Name book

For weeks Valery had mistaken his stare for barefaced hostility, but knowing what he knows now, he was wide of the mark. It was simply just a shy man's way of holding someone else's gaze.

They were, it finally dawned on him, the two shyest persons in the world. 

"So you knew? All this time?" Valery asks. The words strung high in the summer sunshine peeking through the sliver of parted curtains that sit still against the closed windows, leaving their long shadows on the skins of their naked bodies, intertwined limbs sheened with sweat and the lazy afforded pleasure of stolen time. 

"Let's say I was pretty sure." Boris isn't looking his way. Eyes fixed on the peeling paint and plaster of the ceiling. Cigarettes aren't his vice, but Valery watches his thin lips pinching, Adam's apple bobbing, waiting until he has taken in a lungful of nicotine to arch over him, catching him by the chin, shaping in his lips over Boris', sharing in his sins. 

"Why didn't you give me a sign?" Valery says, exhaling, the smoke a hazy veil between their faces. Blue eyes meet his own, a wry twist of Boris's lips lingers for a beat before he tugs him in for a slow, languid exchange of breath and taste of peaches and cream tinged with tobacco. 

"I did. At least I tried."

"When?"

"On the helicopter. When I surprised you that first time. I did that just as a way of showing I liked you. Or at least, that I could. The way you reacted after made me feel I'd molested you. I decided to keep my distance."

The trailing coil of the cigarette smoke climbs high over their heads and Valery is struck by a sudden realisation that they were on borrowed time, that time was always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to part with it and need to borrow more. He turns in Boris' embrace, beginning to take mental snapshots of him, picking up the leftovers of emotions that linger, hoarding and storing them in the hideaways in his soul for the lean days ahead that will sit cold in his gut, to be warmed only by the faded lullabies of the past. 

He commits the feel of Boris, so alive, breathing, vibrant and eternal. Collecting the present to repay the debts of the future that he will surely incur from what is to come. This, he knew, was as much a crime as closing the windows on a sunny afternoon. 

Boris smiles, soft and sweet, taking the cigarette to its funeral pyre, joining its brethren in their broken, pressed bodies scattered in the ash bowl. Valery melts into him, surrendering to the feel of his lips on his sweat beaded brow, realising in one fell swoop of his heartbreaking that his alleged foresight had been utterly futile. 

Bombs never fall on the same spot; this one for all his premonitions, fell exactly in his hideaway. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have never, will never, allow any reposting or translations of my works without my permission. All of my works will and shall only be hosted on my personal accounts on AO3 (j_gabrielle), Dreamwidth (j_gabrielle) and Tumblr (randomingoftherandomness, hardheartshere).
> 
> For those who say that I never said anything, it is clearly stated on my AO3 profile bio.
> 
> I do not have a Twitter account.
> 
> I do not have a Wattpad account.
> 
> **Please Do Not Repost My Fics**


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